Imagine the scene: a Wednesday night next June, a packed Headingley, and the England captain, Jamie Peacock, takes exception to a bloodcurdling tackle from his Leeds front-row partner Kylie Leuluai, sparking the sort of brawl of which we all so heartily disapprove, but quite enjoy watching all the same. Adrian Morley is quickly on the scene, locking horns with his former Sydney Roosters team-mate Craig Fitzgibbon, while the Warrington scrum-half Richie Myler heads for the touchline to scuffle with his mouthy former Salford mentor, Robbie Paul.

Paul is on the coaching staff of the Super League All-Stars team, drawn from all the players in the competition not qualified to play for England. Jason Demetriou and Stanley Gene are the other assistants to Brian Smith, the coach of the NRL champions, Newcastle Knights, who was persuaded to take a fortnight out of their title defence for the opportunity to pit his wits against his younger brother Tony for the first time.

There is much more to the match than violence, though. Kallum Watkins scores two stunning tries to put England in control before Bradford's major 2009 recruit, Craig Wing, replaces Chad Randall at hooker – both having been preferred to the former internationals Danny Buderus and Shaun Berrigan in the squad – and leads a second-half fightback by the All-Stars. The game is locked at 12-all until Kyle Eastmond supports a break by Sam Burgess to secure a morale-boosting win for England ahead of the Four Nations series against Australia, New Zealand and Fiji at the end of the season.

The result deprives the All-Stars players of the business-class flights and £10,000 per man they had been offered by the Middle Eastern airline that sponsored the match, leaving them with a consolation prize of £1,000, a case of VB and a walk-on part in Russell Crowe's next film.

"It stinks," says their captain, Brian Carney, whose resentment about the appointment of Steve Ganson to referee the match was fuelled by his controversial decision to sin-bin only Greg Bird following the Peacock-Leuluai stoush. Carney pledges to delay his retirement by another year but only if the Rugby Football League agrees to appoint two Australian referees for the 2010 All-Stars fixture, Bill Harrigan as the video official with Phil Gould as his assistant. He also repeats his plea to Danny McBrough to turn his back on England and play for the All-Stars next year as a Scot.

Sorry, got a bit carried away there. But it's easy to see why Tony Smith has said that a game between his England team and an overseas select is not only a possible solution to the need to find more competitive international opposition than France in a mid-season Test, but also a game that as a rugby league punter, he'd like to watch.

Last Saturday's Paris mismatch served little purpose for England, other than giving their players a week together in camp. Myler's 30-point performance was a nice story, and gave his burgeoning reputation another boost, but provided no reliable evidence about his ability to function in the pivotal scrum-half role against southern hemisphere opposition this autumn.

You could still argue that it was a beneficial exercise, as international sport always generates more national publicity than the routine club fixtures that rugby league fans love but the wider sporting public mostly ignores. But for France, it was a disaster, undermining the genuine progress that has been made by the Catalans Dragons and now Toulouse at club level.

Even last Saturday night as four of their senior players were away with the national team being mauled in the capital, Toulouse were consolidating their solid position in the Co-operative Championship with a home win against Batley in front of another encouraging crowd. And this weekend the Catalans will break new ground by taking their home game against Warrington to Barcelona, on a Saturday evening which also includes Engage Super League fixtures in London and Wales – someone must have extended that M62 corridor.

But the France team clearly need some tender, loving care, which probably means a game against an Emerging England side next summer. That would leave Smith's senior men looking for a stiffer challenge. The War of the Roses didn't work as a Test trial – maybe the game's no longer parochial enough for that, which must be a good thing – and Possibles v Probables wouldn't float many boats.

But a big-money match between a motivated bunch of overseas players who are sick of being branded mercenaries long past their sell-by date, and an England side who know they can't afford to lose, might have a bit more potential. What do you think?

And as a PS, an early amendment to the initial All-Stars offering that appeared in Monday's Guardian – which was thrown together hastily on the M56 between landing in Paris on Sunday lunchtime and the kick-off in Warrington a couple of hours later. Michael Monaghan has been dropped on the evidence of his performance against Bradford that same afternoon, and I've thrown in a few players who might be on their way here next year. Sticking to the policy of selecting a genuinely cosmopolitan team (including representatives of Fiji, Ireland and Samoa, but no current Kiwis), and avoiding more than two players from any Super League club, how about this?